SAP shares fall on $8 billion Qualtrics takeover announcement
Shares of SAP fell on Monday after the company announced it was buying U.S. survey software maker Qualtrics for $8 billion.
The German software giant said Sunday it would acquire Qualtrics in an all-cash deal that has already gained approval by the boards of both companies, as well as Qualtrics' shareholders.
SAP's share price initially fell around 2 percent as traders in Europe digested news of the deal on Monday, soon extending losses with a 4 percent decrease later in morning trade. As of 12:26 p.m. London time, SAP shares traded 3.65 percent lower.
The deal announced Sunday saw SAP snap up Qualtrics — which counts recently-listed SurveyMonkey among its competitors — ahead of a planned listing for the firm, which would have traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol XM.
It is also one of the largest acquisitions the enterprise software maker has ever made, coming second only to SAP's $8.3 billion purchase of travel and expense software firm Concur in 2014.
In addition, the deal comes on the back of a multitude of takeovers by big tech companies of coveted cloud software firms. IBM recently announced plans to buy Red Hat for $34 billion, the industry's biggest ever acquisition, and Microsoft earlier this year bought GitHub for $7.5 billion.
Qualtrics was founded in 2002 by brothers Ryan and Jared Smith, their father, Scott, and Stuart Orgill. It counts well-known brands including Microsoft, Kellogg, BlackRock, Mastercard and Under Armour among its more than 9,000 customers.
— CNBC's Alex Sherman and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
